title: Functional brain asymmetry in adult novelty response: on fluidity of neonatal novelty exposure effects.
abstract: Novelty and surprises differentially modify the left and right sides of the brain. Here we show that repeated brief exposures to the novelty of a non-home environment during infancy and early adulthood lead to long-lasting changes in adulthood in the global bi-lateralization organization of the brain as indexed by a transiently detectable right-sided orientating bias upon the initial encounter with the novel environment. Most surprisingly, we show that in the same individuals, the short-term effect of the combined neonatal and adulthood novelty exposures on functional brain asymmetry measured at young adulthood (5 months of age) is distinctively different from the long-term effect measured at late adulthood (15 months of age). These results suggest that long-lasting, cumulative effects of early life experience on brain and behavior organization are not necessarily permanent, but continue to unfold, presumably via interactions with a multitude of unmonitored intervening life events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, United States. akaysha@unm.edu
authors.forename: Akaysha C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Bethany
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Reeb-Sutherland
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D001921:Brain / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans